Fields Where Valor Led
by Mariner
Summary: Three consecutive Memorial Days in John Winchester's life.


**Fields Where Valor Led**

**By Mariner**

**I**

The year Dean turned three, John Winchester walked in the Lawrence Memorial Day Parade with Dean riding on his shoulders. He wore his old uniform (which fit perfectly -- the trousers were _not_ tight in the waist, no matter how much Mary giggled about it), and held himself as straight as he could, and carefully paced himself to walk slower than Matty Perkins, who was carrying the VA banner just in front of him and whose left hip hadn't been the same since Iwo Jima. There was a troop of high-school girls in short skirts and gold epaulettes twirling batons ahead of him, and a troop of boy scouts behind, and Mary laughing and waving from the bleachers along the sidewalk. Mary wore shorts and sandals and a bright yellow tank top, and John thought that the sight of her long, slim legs and smooth shoulders was a damned unfair distraction to a man who still had half a mile left to walk in full dress uniform with a hyperactive three-year-old bouncing against this neck.

Afterwards, there was a VA-sponsored picnic at Clinton Lake. John changed into jeans and a t-shirt in the back seat while Mary drove, earning himself a disapproving glare from Matty upon arrival. Matty, John knew, would wear his uniform all day. His boots would gleam, and his medals would clank, and the red poppy on his lapel would nod jauntily at the passers-by. He would get drunk on the free beer and mutter darkly about fool civilians who thought Memorial Day was about picnics and sales and determining when it was okay to wear white. John could see his point, more or less, but deep down he was sort of glad that most people didn't understand.

He sprawled, barefoot and sleepy, on the ridiculous lace-edged picnic blanket Mary's sister had given them for a wedding present, and watched an ice cream-smeared toddler waddle past with a laughing young woman in pursuit. It would be a shitty world, he thought, if these grass-stained children and smiling mothers and sulky teenagers who wanted to be at home watching TV all had to understand what war was. And wasn't that the whole point of fighting after all -- to preserve a place back home that was untouched?

"You're pensive today." Mary came up behind him, a bottle of Coke in each hand. She kicked off her sandals before stepping onto the blanket and sitting down. "Everything okay?" Her knee bumped against John's hip. She smelled of coconut from the suntan lotion she'd put on, and of lemon verbena from that girly soap she liked to use. There were tan lines criss-crossing the tops of her feet from where the sandal straps used to be. She had painted her toenails cherry red.

"Everything's great." John took one of the bottles from her and set it aside without opening it. "Where's Dean?"

"Gone swimming with Diane and her brood." Mary sighed and pressed her Coke bottle against the side of her face. A drop of water, or maybe sweat, trickled along her jaw line and down her throat. "I should've brought a swimsuit. It's a million degrees out here."

"Hmm." John reached over and swiped the water drop from Mary's collarbone with his thumb. "We could sneak off someplace quiet and go skinny dipping." He let his hand wander downward, toward the edge of her tank top.

"John." She caught his wrist and held it, not pushing his hand away, but not letting him cop a feel in public either. "Be good."

"I'm always good." He ran his other hand up her calf to the ticklish spot at the back of her right knee. Mary made a strangled little sound and scooted away from him, but not very far.

"You do realize there's about two hundred other people here, don't you?"

"They're not looking."

"They will be if you keep this up."

"Let 'em look. Maybe they'll learn something." He brushed that spot at the back of her knee again.

"Oh, you're so asking for it," she hissed and moved back toward him, leaning forward. John raised his head from the blanket, thinking she meant to kiss him, and fell back with a thump as her hand slid between his legs and rubbed.

"Jesus Christ, woman, are you _nuts_?" And that was absolutely, positively, not a squeak on the last word. Marines did not squeak.

"You started it, Winchester." Mary scraped her nails over the bulge in his jeans and leaned closer in a way that -- hopefully -- would keep both their hands hidden from view. "So how do you plan to finish it?"

"Uhm--" John did his best to gather his wits and think. Despite his earlier joking suggestion, skinny-dipping was probably not a practical option. Maybe they could go back to the car and--

"Daddy, Daddy!"

"Oh, hell." Mary scrambled aside just in time for John to receive a flying tackle from a wet, sand-covered Dean.

"Daddy!" Dean sat on John's belly and bounced, happily oblivious to what he'd just interrupted. He was wearing wet swimming trunks and a frayed Bugs Bunny t-shirt that was emphatically _not_ the brand-new kid-sized USMC t-shirt John had dressed him in that morning. "Carrie's got a turtle in a box, and it's _this_ big! It eats lettuce and... and... alfa sprouts! Come look!"

"Uhm--" John said again. His command of spoken English appeared to have failed him, which was probably just as well. He threw a pleading look at Mary, who was watching the proceedings with what struck him as highly inappropriate amusement.

"A turtle, honey, really? I'm sure Daddy would love to see."

_Evil woman_ John mouthed silently over his shoulder as he let Dean drag him to his feet. She smirked unrepentantly and raised one hand to wave at him.

_Later_, she mouthed back and blew him a kiss.

John untucked his t-shirt from his jeans and followed after Dean, a little unsteady on his feet but grinning from ear to ear.

**II**

Three weeks after Sammy was born, there was an outbreak of chicken pox at Dean's preschool. John had had chicken pox as a child. Mary hadn't. As a result, Mary and the baby spent Memorial Day weekend at Mary's sister's house, while John stayed at home to play caretaker to an itchy four-year-old.

Friday wasn't so bad. Dean had only a few spots, and a single Benadryl at dinnertime seemed to kill most of the itching. The fever made him sluggish, and he was content to be put to bed early, with only three consecutive readings of _The Very Hungry Caterpillar_ required before John was allowed to turn out the light.

Saturday was the worst. Dean woke crying at six in the morning, sobbing "Daddy, it itches!" over and over as John carried him to the bath. The spots were on his scalp, in his ears and mouth, on the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet and every inch of skin in between. The Benadryl had no noticeable effect, and the calamine lotion only served to transform Dean from a huddled bundle of itchy misery into a _pink_ huddled bundle of itchy misery.

The notes Mary had left before she took off with Sammy said "oatmeal bath," so John dumped some Quaker Oats into the tub, filled it with warm water and put Dean in. It made an ungodly mess, but Dean definitely seemed to feel better. Or maybe he just liked wallowing in oatmeal. He'd always done a great job of smearing the stuff all over himself when Mary made it for breakfast.

Dean ended up spending most of the day climbing in and out of the tub as the need arose, dripping water and clumps of wet oatmeal all over the bathroom floor and the hallway carpet. In between the soaks he made John read _The Very Hungry Caterpillar _twenty-seven times. It was a great relief to both of them when bedtime finally came around.

Mary laughed until she nearly choked when John called her with a progress report on Sunday.

"Breakfast cereal, John! You bathed our son in breakfast cereal."

"You wrote down yourself--"

"Look in the medicine cabinet."

John carried the phone into the bathroom, swearing under his breath at the cord, which kept looping around his ankles with clear malicious intent. He opened the cabinet. Stared at the dainty little box labeled "moisturizing daily oatmeal bath." Looked down at the smears of oatmeal on the floor.

"Oh," he said.

"You're going to clean that up before we come home, right?"

There was one good thing about spending a Sunday afternoon cleaning soggy breakfast cereal out of a hallway carpet. At least he didn't spend it reading _The Very Hungry Caterpillar_.

By Monday, Dean was noticeably better. The spots from earlier in the week were starting to scab over and the oatmeal soak from the medicine cabinet was doing its job with a minimum of mess. In a fit of inspiration, John mixed up a batch of the stuff in the inflatable kiddie pool in the back yard, so Dean could splash around to his heart's content while John sat nearby in a folding chair and read the paper.

"Daddy?" Dean sat up straight, a plastic sailboat dangling forgotten from one fist. "What's that noise?"

"What noise?" John looked up and for the first time became aware of the faint strains of music in the distance. It sounded vaguely like "When the Saints Go Marching In" performed by a semi-competent brass band. "Oh, that must be the parade."

"Parade." Dean's face scrunched up in thought. "Like that time when you wore a costume and carried me?"

"It's not a costume, it's a uniform. And yes, it's just like that time."

"Why?"

"Because it's Memorial Day. They have it every year."

"Why?"

"Because it's a holiday."

"Why?"

John took a deep breath. "Why what, Dean?"

"Why is it a holiday?"

John put down his newspaper and looked at Dean. Dean stared back, eyes wide and solemn amidst a constellation of red spots. Maybe he was old enough to understand. He was a smart kid, knew how to pay attention. He'd gotten the idea behind Christmas well enough when Mary explained it a few months before, so why not this, too?

"Come inside with me, son. I want to show you something."

Seated cross-legged on the living room floor, Dean watched with reverent fascination as John laid out yellowed newspaper clippings, old photos of himself in uniform standing next to men who were now dead, a Purple Heart in its velvet-lined case.

"Do you know what these are, Dean?"

"No, Daddy."

"Pay attention, then. This is important."

**III**

Six months and twenty-eight days after Mary died, John staggered, bruised and bleeding, out the back door of an abandoned house in Wausau, Wisconsin, leaving the ashes of a long-lost corpse in the shadows behind him.

Jim Murphy had sent him here. Crazy old Pastor Jim, who'd gone through two tours of duty with a bible in his back pocket and then made the nickname into literal truth by leaving the Corps and getting himself ordained. Good old Jim, who didn't bat an eye at John's story, who'd helped him with the research and the training, who'd said, "Sure, Johnny, I'll watch the boys until you get back" when John picked out the target for his first hunt.

Destroy the remains, Jim had told him. Salt and burn, nothing more to it. Lay the soul to rest. No more restless ghost, no more young women turning up dead from mysteriously broken necks on June first of every year. Jim had made it sound simple, and John had thought it would make a good first try, a training run of sorts before he faced whatever it was that had killed his wife.

Jim had never mentioned that "only attacks young women" actually meant "only attacks young women and damn fool ex-Marines who are trying to burn it out of existence." Nor had he offered any warnings about just how much of a punch a disembodied spirit could pack. John was going to kick Jim's ass six ways to Sunday when he got back.

If he got back. _Ow_. John's legs buckled abruptly and he sat down hard in the grass, halfway between the no-longer-haunted house and the dirt road where he'd left the car. Bruised ribs, he thought. Maybe broken. That sharp stab of pain across his chest every time he took a breath was not a good sign. The warm trickle of blood from his left temple didn't bode well either. His left wrist was swollen to nearly twice its normal size. John tried to wiggle his fingers, and things went kind of fuzzy for a while.

By the time he could focus again, the sky was growing pale in the east and it was definitely time to move. So John gritted his teeth and moved, ignoring the protests of bruised muscle and cracked bone. He kept his eyes down, kept putting one foot in front of the other until the expanse of grass in his vision was replaced by dirt and then by dust-flecked black metal.

He'd never been so fucking happy to see his car before.

Driving hurt like a bitch. It should've taken only four hours or so to get back to Jim's place in Racine, but six hours after he'd started John found himself pulling over to the shoulder on I-94 for what felt like the hundredth time, slumping over the steering wheel to catch his breath.

He'd grown soft, that was the problem. These injuries were nothing, Band Aid and ice-pack territory. Ten years ago, he would've laughed them off and kept right on going. But that had been ten years of easy living, ten years of laughter and sunshine and Mary, ten years of losing his fighting edge. He'd have to work to get it back now, and keep it, and make sure the boys had it when they were old enough. They could none of them afford to be soft now, not with Mary's killer still walking the earth, a threat to him and to his children.

The last time John pulled over was in downtown Racine, just a few minutes from Jim's place. He kept running into detours everywhere he turned, streets closed off every other block, crowds and traffic everywhere and way too many cops. He had no idea what the hell was happening until he heard the brassy notes of "Yankee Doodle Dandy" in the distance and realized there was a parade going on. It took him another minute or two to recall the occasion.

He was less than ten blocks from Jim's house, and he had no idea how to get there from here. John ran one shaky hand through his hair and checked himself out in the rear view mirror. He'd cleaned up as best he could during an earlier stop, but there wasn't much to be done about the scab on his temple or the spectacular bruising around it. Hopefully he looked more like somebody who'd been in a bar fight and less like somebody who had a body stashed in the trunk. John sighed, rolled down the window and leaned out to address a young woman who was walking by.

"Excuse me, miss? Miss?"

She stopped, polite smile faltering into nervous uncertainty as she got a good look at him. John thought she might've bolted if they weren't in the middle of a crowd in broad daylight. She was just a kid, no older than sixteen, all pimples and braces and mousy brown hair in a ponytail. A basket of red silk poppies hung on a strap from her shoulder.

"How do I get to Carlisle Street?" John asked her.

"Carlisle..." The girl frowned and chewed on her lower lip. "You have to go around." She frowned some more, pointed, rattled off a long list of street names and landmarks that John could barely follow. He thanked her politely, started to roll up the window, then stopped and gestured toward her basket.

"You selling those?"

"One dollar," she said brightly. "All proceeds go to the Disabled Veterans Foundation."

John handed over a dollar bill and accepted a poppy in return. There was a safety pin stuck in the stem, and he used it to attach the flower to the lapel of his coat. In the mirror, the splash of red looked like a blood stain. _For Mary_, he thought. The first casualty in his new war -- and the last, if he had anything to say about it.

He rolled up the window, and the noise of the crowd faded. Only the faintest strain of music pursued him as he drove away from the parade.


End file.
